Earlier this week, Mike Myers and wife Kelly Tisdale welcomed a new daughter, a sister for SpikeAlan and SundayMolly. Their older kids’ names are bold, unconventional choices, but they went a different direction for their newest arrival: Paulina.

It might be a departure for the Myers family, but it’s in step with many of the names that we love for girls today. Sophia is popular the world over. Olivia and Isabella are Top Ten favorites in the US, and names like Arabella, Ariana, and Valentina are stylish, too.

Could Paulina be part of the next wave of long, lovely, romantic names for girls? And if so, what are some of the other up-and-coming names that could also catch on?

Here’s something that fascinates me: the difference between the names that we truly love, but don’t use, and the names that we actually bestow upon our children.

My own shortlist tends towards the daring – Leif, March, Everild, Swan. But would any of those names make it on to my child’s birth certificate? Maybe.

Carrie Underwood recently dished about the names that she and husband MikeFisher considered for son Isaiah, and the reasons that they rejected some of their favorites. She sounded remarkably like almost every mom I’ve ever heard explain why certain names just couldn’t be The Name for their new arrival.

This week’s baby name news was all about the names that we choose and the names that we consider before moving on.

When it comes to baby name trends, it’s tempting to declare that the classics are back, or that originality is the new rule. And some weeks, it does feel like everyone is sticking with tried-and-true names, or turning to the dictionary, or just drawing letters from a bag of Scrabble tiles.

But baby name trends are often subtle. It’s not always about a name. It’s about a letter, a sound, or a style. Or maybe trends are about where we find our inspiration for our children’s names, even how we think about them.